This graphic describes a very methodical approach with obvious fore-knowledge re:response time.
from:
WeaponsMan Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery
Posted on 02/10/2014 7:23:28 AM PST by Travis McGee
Electricity supports not just our comfort but also the necessities of life. Without electricity, America could not come close to supporting its current population.
Electricity and its benefits has been with us for so long that we tend to take it for granted. That is a mistake. What if the grid were to go down nationally for a week, for months? Imagine what life would be like. The economic damage would be incalculable and in more places than I care to think the social fabric could literally be rent apart.
Commonly discussed concerns about the safety of our electrical grid usually center on relatively high-tech attacks like an electromagnetic pulse from an ionospheric nuclear blast or hackers taking down the control systems of power-generating stations or the transmission infrastructure. But what about low-tech options that are much more available to terrorists or foreign enemy governments? These would be actual physical attacks on our electrical infrastructure.
Consider the Metcalf Incident. This involved a sophisticated sniper attack on a Pacific Gas & Electric Company's power station in Metcalf, California in the early morning hours of last April 16.
The description of the Metcalf attack is chilling. The attackers apparently first slipped into an underground vault and expertly severed six AT&T fiber optic telecommunication lines in a way that would make repair difficult. The lid over this vault was so heavy that it would take at least two people to lift it. Then, a half hour later, the snipers began firing at the power station, destroying 17 giant transformers and six circuit breakers.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“The thing that is strange is if the shooter/shooters were so clever why did they leave their brass”
An account I read said the brass had been wiped clean of fingerprints, so perhaps that was another overt message.
Black Friday events are so chaotic, a terrorist attack during one would seem anti-climactic.
I just can't see "jihadists" wiping their brass. CIA yes.....
Someone on the original thread from last week asked what the labor climate was with this facility. (Not claiming that union members were looking for some gravy OT or anything).
All I could determine on a brief internet search was that the timing of the attack was pretty much unrelated to contract expirations for the utility union.
Does anyone have more insider info on this?
The local power company announced on tv a couple years ago they didn’t have replacement tranformers. I’m sure the bad guys were taking notes.
That’s ridiculous!
Blanketing all the transformers in the country would cost trillions.
Transformers require air circulation for cooling.
You cannot shield the insulator cones.
As soon as you do that (IF you did that), the nature of the attack would shift to the next vulnerability.
High tension transmission lines are way more vulnerable than just to rifle fire.
They certainly are.
But rifle fire is quick and doesn’t require close approach.
If they are going to touch the brass they’d pick it up and take it with them.
Most likely is that cops did not see prints on the brass, and the reporter assumed it had been wiped.
Or, they did not use an AK at all, but dropped brass from a different gun to confuse things (or feed propaganda for a new AWB).
Maybe we should spend that money stopping the dangerous people from coming into our country in the first place.
There you go making sense again.
Damn...sorry about the size of that graphic
Well, I’m no engineer, but
1. Brick walls are not that expensive.
2. Billions for the entire grid. Well, yeah, if that’s what it takes. The alternative will cost much more.
Yes that would work, but isulators are a dime a dozen compared what these transformers cost and how few spares there are. Lastly most aren’t even made here any more and the manager of one of the few plant that do build them says they turnout like 1-2 a month.
Correction I meant 10-20 a month
It’s obviously an inside job.
Had they simply taken pot shots at the xformers, one might posit terrorism.
Being able to know what comm resource to cut, at what location, and then which boxes to target means they intuitively understood the substation operations.
Even Power Engineers in the industry wouldn’t know all of that. Only somebody with a working knowledge of that particular plant would know that. Look at the unions.
The alternative is penetration of -- and effective counter-intelligence concerning -- the Jihadist networks. Which is likely less expensive than hardening the entire grid -- which would only cause them to turn their attention elsewhere to another terrorist target (grade schools? malls?, etc.?).
The Russian grid is far less complex than our own, with far fewer sub-stations and alternate routings. And, thus, it is much more vulnerable to interdiction than our own. Yet, to my knowledge, the Russians have not suffered a single attempt on their grid -- probably because it was snuffed out in the planning stages.
The best defense is a good offense.
The original WSJ article summarized in Thinker cited as precident (in paragraph 10 or so) a widespread power outage triggered “by a tree that fell atop a powerline, triggering an unfortunate cascading series of events”.
BUT THAT IS WRONG:
Years later it was disclosed that in fact the cause was CHINESE HACKING.
And that was dissected and passed around here at FR rather widely, in around 2008, or so.
My two guesses are:
1. Very geekified Eco-kooks
2. Iran
I’m leaning towards choice #2.
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